THE FALSE DICHOTOMY OF LIVING WELL AND LIVING GENTLY

• Naomi Oreskes

Co-author of The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future

Back in the 1980s, I used to work in the mining industry. At the time, some of my colleagues drove cars emblazoned with bumper stickers that read: “Let the bastards freeze in the dark!” The “bastards,” of course, were the environmentalists and liberal politicians trying to stop the mining industry from running roughshod over the environment. The laws passed during this time were a crucial part of the effort to clean up America’s skies and waterways, preserving biodiversity and protecting our nation’s unique natural beauty. They tried to force the industry to correct its foolish ways, and in some respects, it worked. America continued to be a prosperous country, but also a far safer and more beautiful one. And none of us have frozen in the dark.

Still, the sentiments expressed by those 1980s bumper stickers haven’t exactly gone away. We still face a seemingly dichotomous choice, between living well and living gently. We are told that if we want to be comfortable, our natural environment must pay the price. To cite just one example: Recently, I was accused on Twitter of being a hypocrite for supporting fossil fuel divestment. The critic argued that without those fuels, I and my fellow Massachusetts residents would have all frozen this past winter.

This, of course, is ridiculous: People found a way to live through plenty of harsh winters before the widespread use of fossil fuels. Americans in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries had heat and they had light. (Native Americans did too.) What fossil fuels did for New Englanders—and for people around the globe—was to make heat and light more accessible, more convenient, and cheaper. They also made life more fun. In the early twentieth century, coal-powered electricity lit up the midtown Manhattan’s Great White Way and powered trolleys that took people to amusement parks. A few decades later, cheap gasoline was enabling people to take “Sunday drives” to green spaces outside of the hot and crowded cities. When I was a child, my family’s summer vacations were car trips: We saw the United States through the glass windows of our Chevrolet—or sometimes a rented Ford station wagon. And it was a good ride, while it lasted.

But what we have learned in recent decades is this kind of access and fun come with a hidden price. The external costs of fossil fuels are diverse, but the single greatest threat facing the world as a whole is climate change. Scientists around the globe have proven time and time again that the world is warming rapidly, and greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels are to blame. Alarming changes in the world’s physical, chemical and biological environment are under way. To stop these changes completely will require profound shifts in the way we live, and this worries many people, no matter what their political persuasion. Folks inside the fossil fuel industry remain comfortable ignoring reality, but even for those not in denial, some people seem concerned that environmentally friendly policies could make our way of life less comfortable.

Personally, I think this last concern is at best misplaced, and at worst a myth being quietly pushed by the fossil fuel industry. In the long run, to be sure, we need to eliminate fossil fuels almost entirely. This will mean a large-scale transformation of our energy system. But in the short run, we can do a lot simply by reducing our use. The average Californian uses about 30 percent less energy than other Americans, and life there is pretty darn good. Some of that difference is due to the state’s mild climate, but not all of it. California has spent years enacting sensible policies that encourage energy efficiency, while promoting a culture of mindfulness about environmental protection. And you don’t have to live in a warm place to benefit from energy efficiency: Germans use about the same amount of energy as Californians, and they are quite warm and snug in their homes in winter.

It turns out a great deal of energy use is just habit. Some changes, like changing our light bulbs or making sure that our car tires are properly inflated, are easy. If we want to go further, however, it might not hurt to get creative. A few years ago, when I was living in southern California, we had an electricity outage on a Friday afternoon. My neighborhood organized an impromptu picnic on the street—people shared food and drink, and, as the stars came out, we stayed up late, chatting, bonding, and generally having a good time. By the end of the evening, the entire block was discussing the idea of an “electricity-free Friday.” By morning, the lights were back on and by Monday the idea had been forgotten.

But why not do it? Many people now practice Meatless Mondays, which are a win–win–win–win. It’s better for the environment, it’s better for our health, lots of vegetarian food tastes delicious, and it almost always costs less to eat vegetables than to eat meat. Reducing doesn’t automatically mean suffering, it just means reorganizing, often in ways that ultimately pay dividends. Just as some people have reduced their meat consumption by eliminating meat at breakfast or lunch, an electricity-free Friday doesn’t have to last the whole day, it could just be an evening. Next Friday night, try turning off the TV, the radio, the computer, and the phones, lighting some candles, making a vegetable crudité platter or other food that doesn’t require cooking, and just spending the night talking. Come winter, you could light a fire or snuggle up in bed. That doesn’t sound like suffering to me.